by Weston Ochse
“I know, I know.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “I sent him on a wild goose chase. But you have to understand, Kavika had this problem he had to deal with. Something was always holding him back. Something inside him kept him from doing anything dangerous.”
“Looks like he overcame that,” snorted Ivanov.
“Yeah, and then some.” Kaja shook his head. The other Pali Boys wouldn’t understand, but they’d just have to deal with it. He turned to the girl. “Listen, whatever it is, count us in. I’m not so sure that we can beat the Corpers, but we can definitely figure out a way to get Kavika back where he belongs.”
“A Bridge Too Far,” Ivanov murmured.
Kaja gave him a look. “Eh?”
“It’s a movie, with Harrison Ford. Before he was in that damned space movie. Instead of doing what they can, they do too much.”
“Ah.” He turned to Lopez-Larou. “Look, not that I don’t want to get revenge for Wu, but I need to go to Princess Kamala about this. It’s just too big.”
“I’d be surprised if she didn’t already know,” Lopez-Larou said, matter-of-factly.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IT TOOK TWO days to plan the mission. Two days of Ivanov talking about movies and strategies and World Wars from a time they could barely envision. Lopez-Larou pointed that out to the old drunk on several occasions, but he’d merely waved her off with the perplexing comment, “It’s all Hollywood anyway. It was never as real as it really was.”
Despite his incoherence, they were eventually ready. Their plan’s success depended on their own boldness, and the Mga Tao’s desire to protect their monkey-backed wards.
They waited until eleven bells before they put the plan in motion. It was important that whatever they did, didn’t come back to haunt them. After consulting with Chito, who was eager to assist, they were ready.
So it was that Kaja, Lopez-Larou, and five of Ivanov’s men walked up the gangway of The University of the Waves. At this time of night, most of those aboard the ship were sleeping. A pair of burley Taos stood at the entry, the orange silk headbands on their foreheads showing their affiliation. Lopez-Larou ignored them. She marched by them and into the ship, her hood pulled forward until her face was hugged in shadow and her hands hidden in the sleeves. The others did the same, following two by two, heads down, pace moderated.
Ivanov’s men were marking the pair; they’d most definitely attempt to bar their way when they left with their packages. She wondered how many Taos would die this night. Two, ten, twenty? It didn’t bother her much. The Taos propagated an outrage. Whether or not they knew it mattered little. At the end of the day she’d trade all of them for someone she cared about.
She followed the path she’d taken earlier, down the halls, past the intersection and onto the landing of the Sports Wing. The room was lit with subdued lighting. Each couch had at least a pair of occupants. The stage was empty, which she privately appreciated. She didn’t know if she could take seeing the naked fat man dance again.
They paused at the top of the stairs, and she searched for Kavika.
Kaja, who’d come to stand beside her, saw him first. He pointed. “There.”
She followed his gesture and saw Kavika lying on a velvet red couch on the other side of the stage, two rows back. She turned and pointed him out to the others.
Then came the hard part.
In order to convince the Water Dogs to help them with more than just the robes from dead Taos, they’d had to promise to retrieve one more monkey-back, a twelve-year-old girl with a cleft lip. She and Kaja searched. Of all those they could see from their position in the room, they identified four girls that could match that description. But an equal number of monkey-backed were turned away from them, so there was no telling how many more there could be.
They left one of Ivanov’s men on the landing, and the rest descended in a slow and stately manner. They’d already garnered the attention of an administrator, sitting at a desk in the far right corner of the room, but so far, she wasn’t doing anything except watching. Lopez-Larou hoped to keep it that way, but knew that one false move, one un-monk-like act, would change that in a heartbeat. She had no idea what sort of response there might be for someone endangering the Mga Tao center of worship, but it was probably nasty.
Kaja turned left and Lopez-Larou turned right, searching for the girl. Moving slowly through the circular aisles, she approached the first girl. Hair had fallen to cover her face. She bent over and pushed it aside. The girl moaned. The monkey made a soft noise, Gree. It wasn’t her. This girl was pure Chinese. Her lip was unmarred.
Lopez-Larou stood, and felt her hood begin to fall back. She grabbed it just in time, or at least she hoped she had. She felt the heat of the administrator’s gaze on her back. When she turned along the arch of aisle, the administrator had gotten to her feet and was staring directly at her, hands on hips. If it had been Bituin, maybe she’d have some leverage, but it was someone else.
With her heart hammering in her chest, Lopez-Larou continued searching, purposely turning down an aisle that would bring her close to the administrator. She’d previously marked two possible candidates for the girl. With any luck it would be the nearest one. But luck wasn’t to be had. The nearest girl had auburn hair. Not common in Filipino genetics. Sill, Lopez-Larou paused beside her to glimpse her face. Her lip was unblemished as well.
Which meant she had to get closer to the administrator.
KAJA’S FEET ACHED inside the boots, and his torso itched from the material. Sure, it felt soft to his fingers, but his skin wasn’t used to being contained in any sort of fabric, much less the clingy orange robes of the monkey-worshippers. He much preferred the freedom of a Pali Boy.
They’d found Kavika, but they had to find the Water Dog girl as well. Looking at all the monkey-backed, it didn’t matter to him. He’d take all of them with him if he could. After he’d learned what he’d learned, he wouldn’t be happy until every one of the monkey-backed were freed from their enslavement. That they were being used to filter blood for the white-skinned Real People was an outrage. The very idea of it surpassed every instance of slavery that had occurred anytime in his world’s past. That it was a death warrant made the situation intolerable. If—he corrected himself—when Kavika was separated from his monkey and Wu was avenged, Kaja would set about creating a plan to halt the outrage permanently. Pele would be with him. Just as she’d held out her hand and pushed him back after he leaped into the face of the storm to become a Pali Boy, she’d do the same to protect the fate of her people.
Regardless of what Princess Kamala said.
He balled his fists as he once again played the conversation through his mind.
“You’ll do nothing to stop them,” she’d ordered.
“But they can’t do this to our people!”
“They have more power than you can believe. We’ll keep our eyes to the horizon and not see what we shouldn’t see.”
“But Princess, I—”
“You heard me, Kaja. Do nothing. Do absolutely nothing about it. As far as you are concerned, this is not happening. Now get skyward. The people need someone heroic. They need to remember who we once were. They need to see the warriors at play, and you’ll go do exactly that. They need to forget who we’ve become.”
It was that last bit that had stung him the hardest. The Pali Boys were puppets, she was saying; worthless, except as a symbol.
Yeah, Kaja had definitely experienced a change in philosophy these last two days, as he looked less and less at the horizon and more and more at what lay beneath it. He watched the people. He saw the hardships of living. He saw both misery and joy, sometimes equally directed at even the smallest things. Like the old man who worked laboriously, almost reverently, repairing the junctures of his bird net, bent under the sun. Or the Water Dogs sleeping in their hammocks on the sides of the ships. He had to admit, watching them was always a guilty pleasure. They seemed so at home, so at rest, and the peace they e
xuded in their slumber was something almost palpable.
He’d spoken at length with Lopez-Larou and learned things about the city he’d never known. She was right about so many things. She’d told him that he stared at the world through a hundred-foot lens. And he had; it was part of being a Pali Boy. And on some levels he knew that it was necessary. But he also knew that to be a citizen of this floating mess of ships they called a city required more than just playing at being a Pacific Ocean Tarzan.
Kaja heard a disturbance from the landing, and looked up to see one of Ivanov’s men snap the neck of a young Tao in an orange robe. Then he turned to see if the administrator had noticed. Thankfully she hadn’t. Her attention had been too focused on Lopez-Larou, who was now in the process of walking right at the old woman.
Kaja cursed under his breath.
The shit was about to hit the fan.
THE ADMINISTRATOR WHISPERED to her in unfathomable Tagalog. Lopez-Larou kept her head down as she walked towards the old woman. She hoped the shadow would be enough to keep her face hidden. The only way she could pass herself off as Filipina would be in the dark.
The girl was three couches away. To get there she had to pass directly by the administrator. She averted her gaze to stare at the monkey-backed.
This close, she could see the eyes of the monkeys staring at her. They’d always given her the creeps. Now, in a room filled with more than fifty of them, she felt sure that they knew what she was here to do. Even as she thought it, one of the monkey’s eyes narrowed, as if it had just read her mind. Then it closed them and farted.
Gree, said the monkey.
Gree, said the child it was attached to.
The woman spoke to her again, more insistently, and reached out to tug her sleeve. Lopez-Larou ignored her.
She stopped beside the couch; the girl matched the description perfectly. So young. The scar bisecting her lip did nothing to take away from her youthful beauty. A beauty that had been stolen by a conspiracy to help the Real People, she reminded herself.
Suddenly she felt herself spun around. The administrator’s face was right next to hers. She was saying something, but stopped once she saw Lopez-Larou’s face. As the old woman opened her mouth to get enough air to scream, Lopez-Larou sunk her fist into her stomach. The administrator gasped, here eyes bulging, and Lopez-Larou clobbered her twice in the temple with a double right hook. The administrator fell to the ground, unconscious.
Lopez-Larou stood over her. “Gree,”she said and kicked her in the stomach.
Then she reached down and scooped the child into her arms. She was heavy with the added weight of the monkey, but not so heavy that Lopez-Larou couldn’t carry her to safety. She turned and found the nearest path to the stairs.
She spied Kaja staring at all the monkey-backed forms, a pained look in his eyes.
“Come on, you. Grab Kavika and let’s go.”
He snapped back from wherever he was and hurried over to Kavika, snatching the young man into his arms and following Lopez-Larou up the stairs.
They didn’t encounter any trouble until they were at the first intersection. Three guards were waiting for them, all holding wickedly sharp-looking machetes. Everyone stopped for a moment, then two of Ivanov’s men pulled out small pistols, pointed them at the heads of the men on either side, and fired. The shots echoed in the enclosed space. The man in the middle froze, and before he could bring his machete to bear, he was also shot in the face.
Lopez-Larou hadn’t been expecting it, but after seeing the monkey-backed in the other room, she’d lost whatever fragile consideration she’d had for the Taos. Staring at the three blood splotches oozing down the wall, she realized that she didn’t even care. Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all. She didn’t care if they were all shot dead.
She nodded to Ivanov’s men, then stepped over the bodies. Now they stepped up their pace. Their shots had to have garnered some attention. By the time they were down the hall and in the grand lobby, all five of Ivanov’s men had pistols in both hands, brandishing them for all to see.
The seven guards and five administrators who were waiting for them with blades didn’t stand a chance... and they knew it. They stepped aside as the party approached.
Then Lopez-Larou saw the holsters on each of the guard’s hips. They had pistols; why not use them? And then she realized; they didn’t want to accidentally shoot the monkeys. As they ran off the ship, Lopez-Larou laughed. Had she thought more about it, she would never have needed such an elaborate plan. She could have just walked into the ship, put a gun to a monkey’s head, and walked out.
Finally, an alarm sounded. Lights all over the ship flashed on.
Kaja ran forward and handed Kavika’s body to some of the Pali Boys; within moments, they’d taken him into the sky and were lost in the darkness.
Ivanov’s men ran into the shadows, but not before they’d placed explosives on either side of the gangway.
Lopez-Larou walked to the edge of the ship, climbed aboard the rail, and stepped off. She plummeted twenty feet before her feet hit water. The cold stunned her. As she sank deeper, she found herself losing her grip on the girl.
Thankfully the Water Dogs had been waiting as planned. They took the girl from her, then gave her a mask to help her breathe. Soon, they were swimming under the ships. In the silence of the ocean and the smudges of lights from the surface, they traveled peacefully. As she was pulled to their destination, Lopez-Larou allowed herself to relax.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE FIRST THING they did when everyone was back at the Morgue Ship was to argue. The fact that they’d freed two monkey-backs from the Taos and were on the verge of possibly liberating them entirely from their simian umbilicals was totally ignored. Instead, they were more concerned about who would be freed first.
“They wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for us.” Chito glared back and forth at the others. “Amy is going to be first.”
Ivanov and Lopez-Larou squared off against him, but Kaja stood back. It didn’t bother him either way; soon, both of them would be free, or at least that was the plan. The method they were going to use was another thing up for debate.
“It was our plan,” said Ivanov, who for once appeared sober. “Without it and my men, you would have never seen Amy.”
“Look around. Do you know where you are?”
“What? You think that this is the right place to do the procedure?” Kaja couldn’t help but interject.
“Yes,” Chito said matter-of-factly. “This is the perfect place.”
“A place for dead people?” Lopez-Larou smirked.
“We have a state-of-the-art med unit aboard the sub. We should be there.”
“She will have the procedure done here!” Chito insisted.
“Do you have an EEG? Do you have a heart monitor?” Ivanov shook his head. “This is ridiculous. All you have here are a bunch of slabs where you recycle dead people for the fish to eat.”
“We need to keep her with us.” Chito spoke evenly, but more softly.
“Listen,” Lopez-Larou said. She put a hand on Chito’s forearm and he didn’t pull away. “Do you really think, after all the efforts we’ve made to bring her here, that we’re going to do anything that would harm her? If you want her to go first, then fine, she can go first.”
Ivanov moved to say something, but Lopez-Larou’s eyes made him pause. Instead, he made a disgusted look and shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter who goes first or second,” she continued. “This whole thing is a work in progress.”
Shortly after that, they had both monkey-backed in the submarine’s medical unit. Chito brought two Water Dogs who’d been trained as nurses by an old woman before she died. They didn’t understand the machines, but in an odd way, Lopez-Larou did.
“We use the EEG and EKG when we’re testing new product,” she told them. “Different chemicals affect different parts of the brain. They’re the perfect tools to inform us about what’s happening between some
one’s ears.
“In this case we’re concerned with the theta waves.” She pointed to a green line on the monitor. On close examination, there were actually two lines so close they nearly overlapped. “This shows the merging of the mind of the human and the mind of the monkey. This is what we believe keeps them alive together and links them in death.”
This was the crux of the plan. The different drugs Los Tiburones made affected different parts of the brain. It was widely believed that the death of a monkey-backed arose from the shared theta waves, so if they were to have any success, they’d have to separate the waves before they separated the bodies, and Lopez-Larou had what she thought was just the right combination of chemicals to do that job.
As she brought out the small vial of chemicals to inject into the conjoined blood streams, she told Ivanov to prepare for the separation.
Half an hour later the monkey was dead and the girl was alive.
Amy’s eyes were a deep ocean blue as they stared wide at the walls of the surgical unit.
Chito spoke to her softly in Tagalog. They were clearly sweet words, even if Kaja couldn’t understand them.
The monkey lay dead in the corner. It had twitched at first, but soon stilled. The tubes that had run blood from Amy still hung from it.
The girl tried to speak. She opened her mouth and felt her face. Her eyes opened wider, almost painfully so, and her voice cracked as a tiny whine slid free. She shot to a sitting position and searched frantically for something.
Then she saw it—the monkey in the corner.
Her scream was sudden and piercing.
Chito pulled her to him and embraced her, whispering into her ear, but he didn’t do anything to block her view of the dead animal.
Kaja stepped into her line of sight, blocking her view. She tried to peer around him, but he stepped in her way again.
She stared at him, and in those eyes he saw nothing but sheer terror. No, there was one more thing swimming behind those beautiful ocean blue irises: sheer insanity, exploding within her.
